The NFL's retirement board awarded disability payments to at least three former players after concluding that football caused their crippling brain injuries -- even as the league's top medical experts for years consistently denied any link between the sport and long-term brain damage.

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The board's conclusion that Webster and other players suffered brain damage from playing in the NFL could be critical evidence in an expanding lawsuit against the league filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The lawsuit, which involves nearly 4,000 former players, alleges that the NFL for years denied the risks of long-term brain damage and "propagated its own industry-funded and falsified research to support its position."

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"Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis," members of the NFL committee wrote in a December 2005 paper in "Neurosurgery," the official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

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However, board documents obtained by "Outside the Lines" and "Frontline" show that the NFL retirement board determined in 1999 that repeated blows to the head had left Webster, who spent most of his 17-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, "totally and permanently" disabled. The board based its finding on the diagnoses of five doctors, including a Cleveland neurologist hired by the board to examine the player. The doctors described Webster as "childlike" and showing signs of dementia.

So essentially, the NFL is accused of faking scientific research to support their claims that football didn't cause brain injuries, all the while the retirement board was paying out disability payments to players who suffered brain injuries while playing._________________